Message-Id: <9311031442.AA24025@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
In-Reply-To:  <01H4VG243B52O2J6MW@MATH.AMS.ORG>
Date:         Wed, 3 Nov 93 15:41:04 CET
From: Michael Downes <MJD@MATH.AMS.ORG>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      $({\it colon},
Status: R


Joachim wrote:

> We have hundreds of long-living documents that use constructs like
>
>     $({\it colon}, {\it space})$
>
> all over the place. If they won't work with a new system, I won't
> switch. And I will recommend the same action to _everybody_ in a
> similar situation.

I'm curious about one part you didn't mention: Why isn't there
higher-level markup in those hundreds of documents like

  \syntax{\character{colon}, \character{space}}

That would not eliminate the problem of incompatibility if \it can no
longer work in math, but it would concentrate the points of change to
a much smaller locus, which is useful in many ways beyond just dealing
with LaTeX upgrade changes. (I know I'm only repeating here an obvious
and well-known to you principle---but that's why I'm curious about the
history of those documents.)

Also, if your documents started with a (self-documenting) command such as

  \TeXformat{LaTeX}{2.09}{<date>}

it would be easier to preserve compatibility.  But the \TeXformat
command would have to be recognized by the format file, of course.

Michael Downes                              mjd@math.ams.org (Internet)